Since the early 1990's, the number of people using the Internet has grown at a substantial rate. As more users take advantage of the Internet, they generate higher and higher volumes of traffic over the Internet. As the benefits of commercializing the Internet can be tremendous, businesses increasingly take advantage of this traffic by advertising their products or services on-line. Such advertising may appear in the form of advertisements on websites or digital television or on cellular telephones, which are comparable to rented billboard space on highways and in cities or commercials broadcasted during television or radio programs.
Before users browse to a particular web page on the Internet, there is much unknown to the advertisers that might advertise on that page and to advertising managers that may conduct advertising campaigns on the advertiser's behalf. Neither the advertisers nor the advertising managers know how many users will browse to particular web pages, and therefore do not know the volume of advertisements that will be viewed (the number of “impressions”). Further, is it not known how many users will select or “click” on each advertisement or if “actions”, e.g., sales or signing up new users, will result from each impression of an advertisement or what the ratio of clicks to actions may be.
Advertisers may be interested in impressions (e.g., if they are trying to increase awareness of a brand), clicks (e.g., if they are trying to provide more information about a product), or actions (e.g., if they are trying to make sales or get new users to sign up for services). Advertisers may be willing to pay for impressions, clicks, or actions, regardless of their interests. Therefore, in addition to wanting to predict impressions, clicks, and actions, one may want to predict other data related to an advertising campaign such as, for example, the ratio of impressions to clicks or actions or the ratio of clicks to actions. The predictions of such data related to advertising on the Internet may help advertisers, and the advertising managers placing advertisements on their behalf, assess the potential value of an advertisement.